The first sensation Osa was pressure. A crushing, overwhelming pressure that squeezed him from all sides, compressing him into a terrifying darkness. It was a feeling of being trapped, of being forced through a tunnel too small, a final, physical tribulation he had no choice but to face.
Then, the pressure was gone, and the world exploded into a chaos of sensation.
Cold. A shocking, brutal cold that assaulted his naked skin after the warm, fluid darkness. It stole his breath, and in its place, a new instinct forced his lungs to expand for the first time. A sound ripped from him—a thin, reedy wail that was swallowed by the vast, howling emptiness around them.
Where…? What…? The thoughts were formless, pre-linguistic, but the awareness was there. Like a ghost in a new machine. He was conscious, but his tools were broken. His eyes refused to focus, presenting him only with a blur of blinding, ochre light and shifting, monochrome shadows. He was blind, but he was not unaware.
He felt the rough, gritty texture of fabric against his skin. The worn, salt-stiffened dress of his mother. He felt the violent, shuddering heave of her chest beneath him. He smelled the iron-tang of blood, the dry, ancient dust of sand, and the desperate, acrid scent of her sweat.
Then came the Pain. It was everywhere. The agony of birth, of new nerve endings firing for the first time, a physical distress so total it was all-consuming. But beneath it, like a bedrock beneath turbulent soil, was the confusion. The profound, soul-deep disorientation. I was just… there. The beeping. The white room. The man with the calm eyes… the code…
The three principles were not words now. They were imprints on his spirit.
His mother's movements were frantic, weak. Her hands, chapped and trembling, fumbled with something—a sharp rock? A piece of metal? He felt a sudden, sharp pull and then a release as the physical tether to his old life was severed. Her breathing was a ragged, wet gasp, each one a struggle.
" Waaa.. waaaaa...." The cries of Osa echoed throughout the desert wasteland.
"Hush… my little star," her voice was a ghost of a whisper, scraped raw by thirst and exhaustion. It was the first voice of this new world, and it was dying. "Hush…"
She tried to wrap him in a spare strip of cloth from her dress, her movements growing slower, more clumsy. The great heaves of her chest were becoming shallow tremors. He could feel the life fading from her, a dimming of the warmth that held him.
Never duck a fade. The impulse, the core of his being, screamed at him to do something. But what could a newborn do? He had no strength, no voice but this helpless cry. His first lesson in this new world was one of ultimate powerlessness. He could not fight this. He could only endure it.
But he could at least Aura farm. The concept translated not as looking cool, but as maintaining the integrity of the self. In this moment, it meant not letting the terror and confusion shatter him. He stopped crying. His tiny body went still, save for the automatic, necessary breaths. He listened. He absorbed. He endured.
Then, a new sensation. A vibration through the sand. A slow, rhythmic crunching. Footsteps.
His mother's body, which had begun to slacken, tensed with a final, miraculous surge of will. Her head lifted from the dust.
A shadow fell over them, blocking the blistering sun. It was a tall, a silhouette of ragged robes against the blinding sky.
"You…" his mother breathed, the word a final exhalation. "Please… the child…"
The old man knelt. Osa could not see his face, but he could feel his presence, it was not explosive like Joon-ho's, but deep and weathered and still, like a canyon that had endured a million storms. Gnarled but surprisingly gentle hands reached out.
His mother, with the very last dregs of her strength, lifted Osa—a final, monumental act of standing on her business, the business of motherhood. She placed his tiny, swaddled form into the old man's waiting arms.
"His name…" she whispered, but the breath failed her. The name died on her lips. Her body settled into the sand, a final, quiet release.
The transfer was complete. The warmth of his mother was replaced by the dry, leathery warmth of the old man's hands. Osa was now held by a new gravity, a new fate.
The old man looked down at the bundle in his arms. Osa, his vision still a milky haze, could only sense the shape of a face, the shadow of a beard. But he could feel the man's gaze. It was a searching look, an assessing look.
The man's voice, when he spoke, was like the grinding of ancient stones, dry and deep.
"No name," the old man murmured, not to the mother, but to the child. As if he knew. "The desert takes what it wishes. It has taken your past. What remains is what you are. And what you will become."
He tucked Osa securely inside his robes, against his chest, shielding him from the sun and the wind. The world went dark again, but this was a different dark. Not the dark of the womb, nor the dark of death, but the dark of a traveler's cloak. A dark of movement. A dark of purpose.
As the old man began to walk, each step a steady, unwavering rhythm against the desert floor, Osa's nascent mind, cradled between the memory of a hospital room and the reality of a wasteland, held onto three things... The crushing pressure he did not duck. The mother who stood on her business until her last breath. And the silent,enduring aura of the man who now carried him forward.
The first fade was over. The business of this new life had begun.